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Audiofiles and Information from our Previous Events
Saturday, July 10, 2010
DEMOCRACY ZONE:
Creating bi-cultural youth-led social change in Napa, California
DEMOCRACY ZONE:
Creating bi-cultural youth-led social change in Napa, California
A conversation with Leslie Medine, John Esterle and Ellen Schneider
Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts.
Leslie Medine is one of Northern California's most respected public sector leaders.
She has created youth-led innovative schools and community programs for young people. Now she is organizing the first Democracy Zone in the country located in Napa where Latino and Anglo young people are making decisions and taking action on behalf of 2000 children and youth in their neighborhood.
John Esterle is executive director of The Whitman Institute, a San Francisco
Foundation that supports Leslie's workand is the only foundation in
America with a pure focus on dialogue, critical thinking, and civic engagement.
Ellen Schneider, executive director and founder of Active Voice, has worked at the intersection of film and civic engagement for more than 25 years. She was formerly the executive producer of P.O.V., PBS's longest-running independent documentary series. Schneider created and executive produced the pilot TV series, Right Here, Right Now, which Entertainment Weekly called "a blueprint for what reality television should be all about."
Listen to three thought partners in social change talk about what it takes to make a difference.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Gumshoe: Slease or Extistential Hero?
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Gumshoe: Slease or Extistential Hero?
A Conversation with Tink Thompson
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Bolinas private detective Tink Thompson was a Haverford philosophy professor who taught Nietzsche and Kierkegaard before he became a sleuth.
He has worked on the Kennedy assassination, the Oklahoma bombing, and the Patty Hearskidnapping. His books include "Gumshoe" and "Six Seconds in Dallas."
He is a big fan of Dashell Hammett. He believes you can trace noir detective fiction back to the cultural cataclysm of World War I in Europe and the consequent emergence of European existentialists like Husserl, Sartre and Camus.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Marin Carbon Project
with
John Wick & Peggy Rathmann
Co-sponsored with:
MMOB, Transition West Marin and MALT
Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts.
John Wick, Marin Carbon Project Director and Steering Committee Member, is co-owner with his wife, Peggy Rathmann, of the Nicasio Native Grass Ranch. His background is in construction project management. As Director of the Marin Carbon Project, Mr. Wick's role is to help launch the Marin Carbon Project and to plan, execute, and finalize projects according to deadlines and within budget. This includes acquiring resources and coordinating the efforts of Steering Committee members, member organizations, volunteers, contractors, and consultants in order to deliver projects according to plan.
Why a Marin Carbon Project?
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is not enough to reverse global warming: we must also reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The Marin Carbon Project is investigating the potential for specific land management practices to enhance sequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide as organic matter in rangeland and agricultural soils in California.
Soil carbon sequestration is the process of moving carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into the soil. Through the process of photosynthesis, plants pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and transfer that carbon below ground via root exudates and sloughing of roots; and to the soil surface when they drop leaves or other plant parts, and when they die. In this way, atmospheric carbon dioxide becomes soil organic matter.
Soil organic matter is approximately fifty percent carbon. Over the past 150 years we may have lost fifty to eighty percent of our topsoil worldwide. It is estimated that more than a third of the carbon dioxide we have added to the atmosphere during that time has come from changes in land use and poor land management. This soil-derived change in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration suggests the potential for improved land management practices to result in sequestration of significant amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide in the soil as organic matter.
Increasing soil organic matter has innumerable benefits in addition to helping to slow or reverse global warming. Improved soil water holding capacity, improved soil fertility, improved soil tilth, improved water quality, decreased need for petroleum-based pesticides and fertilizers, decreased erosion and increased production are all well-documented effects of increasing soil organic matter.
Sunday March 7th, 2010
A Nutritional Supplement Strategy:
Based on Human History, Current Science, and Individual Needs
- A Conversation with Sadja Greenwood, MD
In Collaboration with: Coastal Health Alliance and The Healing Arts Center
Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts.
Sadja Greenwood is a primary care physician with a special interest in women's health. She has been an activist for women's health throughout her career, in family planning, reproductive rights, self-care, education and services for mid-life women. She is the author of Menopause, Naturally (revised edition, 1996).
Visit Sadja’s blog at http://sadjascolumns.blogspot.com/
Sunday, January 31, 2010
THE RED BOOK: Reflections on Jung and the Jungians -
A Conversation with Thomas Kirsch, M.D.
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a period of personal crisis following his break with Sigmund Freud.
A surprise best seller, THE RED BOOK has been reviewed in major periodicals around the world.
THOMAS KIRSCH has a deep knowledge of Jung and the Jungian movement. Born to two first generation Jungian analysts, Kirsch knew Jung as a child. He has served as president of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco and the International Association of Analytical Psychology. He taught Jungian psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Stanford Medical Center for many years, and is the author of an acclaimed study of the Jungian movement, The Jungians.
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December 5 & 6, 2009
Coming Back to Life:
A Weekend with Joanna Macy
and The Work That Reconnects is presented by The New School at Commonweal, Point Reyes Books, and Living Leadership Institute.
renewed and deepened for the healing of our world.
They belong to no government, corporation, or military
force, but to the self-organizing nature of life itself.
The Work That Reconnects draws on spiritual traditions (mainly Buddhist) and living systems theory to help us uncover these powers. We will discover how they can bring forth fresh vision, courage, and creativity in this time of planetary crisis.
Joanna Macy, Ph.D., is an ecophilosopher and activist known worldwide for her teaching and worshop methodology. Her books include Coming Back To Life; World As Lover, World As Self; Mutual Causality;, and translations of Rilke's poetry.
For more information about The Work That Reconnects, please visit:
www.joannamacy.net
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Righteous Chops on the Family Farm
with Nicolette Hahn and Bill Niman
Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts. You may also download the PDF file here of Nicolette's presentation to follow along with as you listen. A streaming version is included below as well.
her time is spent speaking and writing about the problems of
industrialized livestock production, including the book
"Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms" (HarperCollins, 2009) and three essays she has written on the subject for the New York Times.
Bill Niman is a cattle rancher in Northern California, proprietor of BN Ranch, and Founder of the natural meat company Niman Ranch, Inc. He was a member of the Pew Foundation's National Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, which released recommendations for reform of the nation's livestock industry in April 2008.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
A Conversation with
Fritjof Capra
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Fritjof Capra, Ph.D., physicist and systems theorist, is a founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California, which is dedicated to promoting ecology and systems thinking in primary and secondary education. He is on the faculty of Schumacher College, an international center for ecological studies in the UK. Dr. Capra is the author of several international bestsellers, including The Tao of Physics , The Web of Life, and The Hidden Connections: A Science for Sustainable Living. His most recent book, The Science of Leonardo, was published in paperback by Anchor Books in December 2008. www.fritjofcapra.net.
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Sunday, October 18, 2009
"It's About Lyme"
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A two-part community awareness program for the town of Bolinas, this will be a chance to learn more about one of the
fast growing epidemics in our world today. How does one contract Lyme? What is the protocol once one is infected?
What is the long range prognosis for recovery? What is the nature of chronic Lyme disease? These are among the
issues to be raised and discussed, in a context of
information presented and treatments explored.
At the Bolinas Fire House, from 1-3 PM:
A screening of "Under Our Skin," an award-winning documentary about the controversy surrounding the endemic. To view the film's trailer, go to www.underourskin.com
At Commonweal Library, from 3:30-5:30 PM:
A community gathering for a discussion between the film's director/producer Andy Abrahams Wilson and Win Bertrand, MD of Gordon Medical Associates in Santa Rosa, followed by a question and answer session.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Healing Yoga: A Conversation with
TKV Desikachar and Kate Holcombe
Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts.
Kate Holcombe is a senior student of Mr. Desikachar and founder of the Healing Yoga Foundation in San Francisco.
For over 45 years, TKV Desikachar has devoted himself to teaching yoga and making it relevant to people from all walks of life and with all kinds of abilities. His teaching method is based on T Krishnamacharya's fundamental principle that yoga must always be adapted to an individual's changing needs in order to derive the maximum therapeutic & personal benefit. In addition to the three decades of yoga training he received from his father, TKV Desikachar holds a degree in structural engineering. He is one of the world's foremost teachers of yoga and a renowned authority on the therapeutic use of yoga. We invite you to visit the Healing Yoga Foundation website.
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Sunday, October 4, 2009
The Music of the Spheres:
Rediscovering the Harmonic Relationship
Among the Planets
A Conversation with Walter Murch
Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts. Note: This conversation relied heavily on Mr. Murch's visual presentation, which is unavailable. Still, we found the conversation so compelling as to make it available for listening. Please familiarize yourself with this article for further understanding of Walter's work in this area.
Walter Murch is an Academy Award winning film editor and sound designer who has done celebrated work with George Lucas, Francs Ford Coppola, Anthony Minghella, and others. He is the subject of Michael Ondaatje's "The Conversations," based on their dialogues when Murch was editing Minghella's The English Patient (based on Ondaatje's novel). He has written an acclaimed book on film editing, In the Blink of an Eye. But his greatest historical contribution may yet prove to be in astronomy, where he has refined and rehabilitated an ancient observation that the planets and moons in our solar system are arranged in a harmonic relationship that gives scientific expression to the concept of "the music of the spheres." Please prepare for this conversation with this astonishingly interesting polymath by reading the interview with Murch at http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/heliocentric-pantheon-interview-with.html
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Sunday, August 9, 2009
ARE WOMEN HUMAN?
Reflections on Sexual Violence --
A Conversation with Catharine A. MacKinnon
Commonweal, Main Building
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Catharine A. MacKinnon is America's foremost feminist legal scholar and a leading public intellectual and political philosopher. She has made major contributions to law and public policy on equality, sexual harassment, pornography, trafficking, rape, and genocide. MacKinnon is a lawyer, teacher, writer, and activist on sex equality domestically and internationally. She is Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, The James Barr Ames long-term visitor at Harvard Law School, and Special Gender Adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. She has taught at twelve law schools including Yale, Stanford, Chicago, Osgoode Hall (Toronto), Columbia, and Hebrew University (Jerusalem) and been a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study (Berlin, 1992-3) and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Stanford, 2005-6). Widely published in many languages (three of which she speaks in addition to English) her dozen books include Sex Equality (2001/2007), Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (1989), Only Words (1993), Sexual Harassment of Working Women (1979), and most recently, Women’s Lives, Men’s Laws (2005) and Are Women Human? (2006). MacKinnon created the concept that sexual abuse violates equality rights, pioneering the legal claim for sexual harassment as sex discrimination and, with Andrea Dworkin, recognition of the harms of pornography as civil rights violations. The Supreme Court of Canada has largely accepted her approach to equality, hate speech, and pornography. Representing Bosnian women survivors of Serbian genocidal sexual atrocities, she established legal recognition of rape as an act of genocide and won with co-counsel a $745 million verdict at trial. She works with Equality Now, an international NGO promoting sex equality worldwide, and the Coalition against Trafficking in Women (CATW). Empirical studies document that Professor MacKinnon is one of the most widely-cited legal scholars in the English language.
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August 2, 2009
Sunday, August 9, 2009
ARE WOMEN HUMAN?
A Conversation with Catharine A. MacKinnon
Commonweal, Main Building
Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts.
Catharine A. MacKinnon is America's foremost feminist legal scholar and a leading public intellectual and political philosopher. She has made major contributions to law and public policy on equality, sexual harassment, pornography, trafficking, rape, and genocide. MacKinnon is a lawyer, teacher, writer, and activist on sex equality domestically and internationally. She is Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, The James Barr Ames long-term visitor at Harvard Law School, and Special Gender Adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. She has taught at twelve law schools including Yale, Stanford, Chicago, Osgoode Hall (Toronto), Columbia, and Hebrew University (Jerusalem) and been a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study (Berlin, 1992-3) and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Stanford, 2005-6). Widely published in many languages (three of which she speaks in addition to English) her dozen books include Sex Equality (2001/2007), Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (1989), Only Words (1993), Sexual Harassment of Working Women (1979), and most recently, Women’s Lives, Men’s Laws (2005) and Are Women Human? (2006). MacKinnon created the concept that sexual abuse violates equality rights, pioneering the legal claim for sexual harassment as sex discrimination and, with Andrea Dworkin, recognition of the harms of pornography as civil rights violations. The Supreme Court of Canada has largely accepted her approach to equality, hate speech, and pornography. Representing Bosnian women survivors of Serbian genocidal sexual atrocities, she established legal recognition of rape as an act of genocide and won with co-counsel a $745 million verdict at trial. She works with Equality Now, an international NGO promoting sex equality worldwide, and the Coalition against Trafficking in Women (CATW). Empirical studies document that Professor MacKinnon is one of the most widely-cited legal scholars in the English language.
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August 2, 2009
Life Over Cancer: Keith Blocks's Program for Integrative Cancer Treatment
A talk and book-signing with Keith Block, MD
Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts.
Download a PDF of Keith's presentation to review while listening to the audio.
Keith gave a 40 minute talk, answer questions, and signed copies of his new book, "Life Over Cancer." Andrew Weil, M.D., writes in his preface: “Life Over Cancer sets the course for what I believe is the future of successful cancer treatment,” “I believe in Keith’s program and would go to the Block Center if I were facing a diagnosis of cancer. It is where I have sent and will continue to send my friends and family members,” and “Life Over Cancer is the program every cancer patient deserves in order to have the best chance for recovery and restoration of health.”Keith's book-cover says: "Dr. Keith Block is at the global vanguard of innovative cancer care. As medical director of the Block Center for Integrative Cancer Treatment in Evanston, Illinois, he has treated thousands of patients who have lived long, full lives beyond their original prognoses. Now he has distilled almost thirty years of experience into the first book that gives patients a systematic, research-based plan for developing the physical and emotional vitality they need to meet the demands of treatment and recovery. Based on a profound understanding of how body and mind can work together to defeat disease, this groundbreaking book offers: • Innovative approaches to conventional treatments, such as “chronotherapy”–chemotherapy timed to patients’ unique circadian rhythms for enhanced effectiveness and reduced toxicity • Dietary choices that make the biochemical environment hostile to cancer growth and recurrence, and strengthen the immune system’s ability to attack remaining cancer cells • Precise supplement protocols to tame treatment side effects, relieve disease-related symptoms, and modify processes like inflammation and glycemia that can fuel cancer if left untreated • A new paradigm for exercise and stress reduction that restores your strength, reduces anxiety and depression, and supports the body’s own ability to heal • A complete program for remission maintenance–a proactive plan to make sure the cancer never returns Also included are “quick-start” maps to help you find the information you need right now and many case histories that will support and inspire you. Encouraging, compassionate, and authoritative, Life over Cancer is the guide patients everywhere have been waiting for." Keith is a longtime Commonweal friend and an extraordinary resource for cancer patients and health professionals. He will be accompanied by Mark Renneker, M.D., also a longtime Commonweal friend and an equally eminent investigator of medical treatments for a wide range of serious illnesses. Don't miss this special opportunity to learn from one of the foremost pioneers of integrative cancer treatments.
July 15, 2009
What Is Art?
Reading Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' and Tolstoy's What Is Art?
with Handord Woods, Shakespeare Scholar and
Eric Karpeles, Discussant
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July 8, 2009
Russell Jaffe, MD
"The Alkaline Way: Diet, Supplements, Detoxification, and Real Health Care Reform.
Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts.
We have (again!) a special opportunity for a conversation with a remarkable Commonweal friend, Russell Jaffe, M.D. Russ will talk with us about "The Alkaline Way: Diet, Supplements, Detoxification, and Real Health Care Reform." Trained in Clinical Pathology at the National Institutes of Health, Russ served on the permanent NIH staff as a practicing molecular biologist and molecular pathologist. In the course of his later career, Russ has worked extensively in optimal health, nutrition, Oriental Medicine, and color and music therapy. He was the founding Chairman of the Scientific Committee of the American Holistic Medical Association. In 1984, Dr. Jaffe developed the lymphocyte response assays (LRA) by ELISA/ACT tests. These tests enable physicians to examine the responses of patients' immune systems to challenges. He is also the founder of Perque, a nutritional supplement company.
Friday, June 12, 2009
My Book is a Painting--Marcel Proust & the Resonance of the Visual Images
with Eric Karpeles
Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts.
Download a PDF of amazing slides from Eric's presentation.
Eric Karpeles, author of Paintings in Proust, will present an illustrated talk entitled "My book is a Painting: Marcel Proust & the Resonance of the Visual Image." Some of you shared with me the privilege of hearing a remarkable talk Eric gave last year in Point Reyes. I was so stunned by his presentation that I wanted to hear it again myself and to give others the opportunity to hear it for the first--or second--time.
Paintings in Proust has received considerable acclaim in the US, Britain and France, where the French edition sold out its first printing in three weeks. Salman Rushdie called it his favorite book of the year. The NY Times claimed the book elicited "the literary equivalent of a hosanna." A NY Observer critic wrote that the work is "authoritative, intelligent, amusing, and can be enjoyed without prior exposure to Proust." The same can be said about Eric's talk, which, while specifically about Proust, is also generally about the mind of the artist and the creative process.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
DOGS NEVER LIE ABOUT LOVE AND OTHER TOPICS --
A Conversation with Jeffrey and Leila Masson
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Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson is a writer who lives with his family in New Zealand. He has been a professor at several universities in Canada and America. After serving as Projects Director of the Sigmund Freud Archives, he wrote a series of books critical of psychiatry and therapy. In the 1990’s he turned his attention to animals, and in particular, their emotional lives. His book “When Elephants Weep” became an international best seller, as was “Dogs Never Lie About Love”. Since those two books he has published 6 more books about animals.
Jeff believes: “When animals are no longer colonized and appropriated by us, we can reach out to our evolutionary cousins. Perhaps then the ancient hope for deeper emotional connection across the species barrier, for closeness and participation in a realm of feelings now beyond our imagination, will be realized”.
Dr. Leila Masson is a pediatrician interested in disease prevention through healthy nutrition and life style. Her goal is to help her two sons and her husband - and all her patients - to live in optimal health. Dr. Masson provides biomedical treatment for children on the autistic spectrum, a wholistic approach to behavior and learning challenges, as well as assessment and treatment of children with allergies and other pediatric health problems. Dr. Masson's aim is to treat the whole child, not just the symptom, and to support the family on their path to better health.
Please visit Jeffrey’s websites at
www.jeffreymasson.com/animal-books/when-elephants-weep.html
www.jeffreymasson.com/library.html
www.jeffreymasson.com/animal-books/dogs-never-lie.html
Monday, March 30, 2009
Wireless or Wellness
A Conversation with Cindy Sage and Nancy Evans of the BioInitiative
Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts.
New wireless technologies have changed the face of the world in the last decade. Cell and cordless phones, and the wireless towers that send their signals around town have very real bioeffects. Decision-makers and the public are just learning about possible health risks. What can you do to help protect your health? These and other important topics will be covered by Cindy Sage, Sage Associates, Co-Editor of the BioInitiative Report. She and 14 other scientists and public health experts have written a definitive report on the science and public health implications of wireless technologies. She will discuss the report and answer your questions about wireless.
Cindy Sage is the owner of Sage Associates, Montecito, CA. She also is a Research Fellow at Orebro University Hospital, School of Health and Medical Sciences, Department of Oncology, Orebro, Sweden.
Nancy Evans is a health science writer and editor with more than three decades of experience in health science publishing. She is an honorary member of Sigma Theta Tau, the international honor society in nursing.
Diagnosed with breast cancer in 1991, Nancy became a leader in the grassroots breast cancer movement, and has spoken on breast cancer issues nationally and internationally. She is currently Health Science Consultant to the Breast Cancer Fund in San Francisco.
Nancy is the original editor of State of the Evidence: The Connection Between Environment and Breast Cancer, published by the Breast Cancer Fund in a new 5th edition. She also co-facilitates (with Cindy Sage) the EMF Working Group of the Collaborative for Health and the Environment.
Nancy has co-produced three documentary films (with Allie Light and Irving Saraf): Rachel s Daughters: Searching for the Causes of Breast Cancer Children and Asthma Good Food, Bad Food: Obesity in American Children. She is also a mother and a grandmother.
Friday, March 27, 2009
'Endocrine Disruptors in Indoor & Outdoor Air',
An interview with Julia Brody, Ph.D
Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts.
Julia Brody is a leader in research on environmental pollutants and breast cancer and in public engagement in science. She is the executive director of Silent Spring Institute, a research organization dedicated to studying the links between the environment and women's health, especially breast cancer.
Dr. Julie Brody and her team at the Silent Spring Institute in Massachusetts are well-known pioneers in exploring linkages between toxic chemicals exposures and breast cancer, prompted by the high incidence of breast cancer in Cape Cod. Upholding the legacy of Rachel Carson in exploring how environmental threats contribute to disease incidence, Brody has produced compelling results from her work in Cape Cod, where she has tested 120 homes and their inhabitants for levels of toxicants. Recent work has brought her team to Richmond and Bolinas where the team as tested a number of homes for the presence of toxic chemicals in indoor and outdoor air.
Householders in both towns found the results surprising. Like most people, they assumed that exposures to toxicants occurred primarily if one were to live near an industrial area, a military facility or near the site of some sort of chemical accident. Brody s research indicates that many of us may be additionally exposed to toxicants through the use of products we use everyday, products such as cleaners, personal care products, paints, solvents, or the materials we use in constructing our houses.
Dr. Brody has also explored how best to present monitoring results to study participants. Most medical monitoring, such as dental X-rays, mammograms and others is conducted to determine whether a medical intervention may be called for. Biomonitoring humans for levels of toxic chemicals, except in the case of extreme exposures, is different. The levels of toxic chemicals found in the body of an individual are generally not predictive of individual health outcomes. Yet learning about one s own chemical body burden can be perplexing or alarming, given that many of the chemicals monitored may be closely connected to health harm in laboratory studies. Given that information about the presence of toxic chemicals in everyday products is limited or nonexistent, researchers may be unable to tell project participants how to avoid future exposures. Many researchers prefer not to tell monitoring participants individual results in order to avoid these problems. Dr. Brody s research indicates however, that despite these uncertainties, many participants want to know about and want to discuss their levels of exposure and have found ways to make use of this information.
Click on the link to visit the Silent Spring Institute website.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Decision-Making As If Consciousness Matters
A Conversation with
Mark Gerzon
Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts.
Mark Gerzon, a leader in building global community and conflict resolution, believes critical decisions are often deeply flawed because they are made in settings that neglect the importance of nurturing a consciousness that elicits our deepest wisdom. His passion is designing environments that meet Einstein's transformative challenge: to ensure that we do not try to solve problems on the same level awareness at which they were created. Join us for a very special New School Conversation.
Mark Gerzon is Founder and President of Mediators Foundation and author of 'Leading Through Conflict: How Successful Leaders Transform Differrences into Opportunities'.
You are also invited to visit EastWest institute website ...'working to make the world a safer place by addressing the seemingly intractable problems that threaten regional and global stability.'
2008 Events
December 6, 2008
FINDING BEAUTY IN A BROKEN WORLD, A Conversation with Terry Tempest Williams.
Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts.
Terry Tempest Williams, one of the most exquisite and powerful voices for healing ourselves and the earth. Terry has been called 'a citizen writer' who speaks out eloquently on behalf of an ethical stance toward life. A gifted naturalist and fierce advocate for freedom of speech, Terry has shown us how environmental issues are social issues that ultimately become matters of justice. 'So here is my question,' she asks, 'what might a different kind of power look like, feel like, and can power be redistributed equitably even beyond our own species?'
Saturday, November 22, 2008
LIFE LESSONS IN HEALING: Cancer, Trauma, and Mind-Body Medicine With James S. Gordon, MD.
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Jim Gordon is one of America's leading authorities in mind-body medicine. He founded the influential Cancer Guides training program, sponsors the premier Food as Medicine training, and conducts Healing the Wounds of War trainings in Israel, Gaza and other conflict zones. Jim Gordon is the Founder and Director of The Center for Mind-Body Medicine (CMBM), a Clinical Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Family Medicine at Georgetown Medical School, and recently served as Chairman of the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy.
Yoga For Trauma: A Conversation with Therese Poulsen. This event was held at Commonweal on Thursday, September 18th, 2008.
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Therese Poulsen is the founder and director of Breath of Hope Foundation, through which she brings yoga and integrative healing to children traumatized by natural disasters or war in Sri Lanka, Indonesia and other countries in the Global South. Therese has been teaching yoga and integrative approaches to healing for over two decades. More >>
Dharma Talk and Meditation with Shodo Harada Roshi. This event was held at Commonweal on Sunday, September 14th, 2008.
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Shodo Harada Roshi was born in 1940 in Nara, Japan. He began his Zen training in 1962 when he entered Shofuku-ji monastery in Kobe, Japan, where he trained under Yamada Mumon Roshi (1900-1988) for twenty years. He was then given dharma transmission (inka) and was subsequently made abbot of Sogenji monastery in Okayama, Japan, where he has taught since 1982.
Harada Roshi (Roshi means "teacher") is heir to the teachings of Rinzai sect Zen Buddhism as passed down in Japan from Hakuin and his successors. Harada Roshi's teaching includes the traditional Rinzai practices of daily sutra chanting, zazen (seated meditation), sanzen (private interviews with the teacher), susokkan (breathing), koan ('past cases') study, samu (work), sesshin (intensive retreats), teisho (lectures by the teacher), and takuhatsu (alms receiving). More >>
Life Lessons in Sustainability and Resilience: A Conversation with Paul Hawken. Co-sponsored by The New School, Mainstreet Moms and Point Reyes Books. This event was held at Commonweal on Sunday, September 7th, 2008.
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Paul Hawken is an environmentalist, entrepreneur and author. Paul heads the Natural Capital Institute www.NaturalCapital.org, which has created a hub for global civil society www.WiserEarth.org, a collaboratively written, free content, open source networking platform that links NGOs, funders, business, government, social entrepreneurs, students, organizers, academics, activists, scientists and citizens. More >>
Making Waves and Riding the Currents: Activism and the Practice of Wisdom -- A Book Reading and Conversation with Charles Halpern. Co-sponsored by The New School and Point Reyes Books. This event was held at Point Reyes Books on Saturday, August 23rd, 2008.
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Charles Halpern is social entrepreneur and a pioneer in legal education, public interest advocacy, and philanthropy. The founder of the nation's first public interest law firm, and a major public interest law school, he ran the Nathan Cummings Foundation, and was the founder of Demos, a New York-based think tank. During his years of activism, he began to see ways to develop his inner resources to complement his cognitive and adversarial skill, a journey described in his book, Making Waves and Riding the Currents: Activism and the Practice of Wisdom (Berrett-Koehler). This book illustrates the life-enhancing benefits of integrating a commitment to social justice with the cultivation of wisdom. More info >>
A Conversation with Jerry Mander -- Will Globalization Soon Be Over? What do climate change, peak oil, and resource depletion mean for the dominant economic paradigm? This event was held at Commonweal on Sunday, August 17th, 2008.
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Jerry Mander is the founder and director of the International Forum on Globalization (IFG) a "think tank" and activist community with Board and Associate members on every continent. IFG has focused since 1994 on exposing the negative impacts of economic globalization on nature, human communities, equity, and democracy. IFG publishes reports, positions papers, and books, and also produces private and public education events, from private strategic seminars to large teach-ins. Best known among these were the huge events in Seattle in 1999 in opposition to the World Trade Organization. IFG has been generally credited with being among the leading international organizations that have defined, articulated and acted on a comprehensive critique of economic globalization. More info >>
Mapping Local Resilience in Bolinas: Looking back through the Bolinas Community Plan history and Looking forward to the answers we'll need for a thriving future. A conversation with Steve Matson and students of the Regenerative Design Institute. Co-sponsored by The New School and Mainstreet Moms. This event was held at Commonweal on Tuesday, July 1, 2008.
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Participants came for images and stories from the pioneering Bolinas Community Plan "old guard" days. Steve Matson showed his beautiful and evolving maps, and explained how he and the Regenerative Design students at the Commonweal Garden have started to visualize more local economy, diverse and creative food production, wild paths for wildlife, community-building, and more -- on paper.
Below is a slideshow from one of our event attendees, Bill Braasch. Many thanks to Bill for the slideshow. You can visit his blog here.
Demeter, Buddha and the Bears: The Ancient Roots of Contemporary Spiritual Healing -- A Community Conversation and Gathering with Michael Samuels, MD. This event was held at Commonweal on Sunday, March 30th, 2008.
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The Eleusian Mysteries, the story of Demeter and her daughter Persephone, was the most important art and healing ritual for consciousness transformation in history. The mysteries were enacted in ancient Greece for 2000 years. The Tibetan Buddha realms provide the technology of guided imagery and were the high point of body, mind and spirit technology for thousands of years. The Bear Dance conducted currently in southern California has healed the Chumash people for thousands of years. These three rituals help us understand how we can heal patients with spiritual tools in present day medicine. Dr. Michael Samuels is currently working with all three forms to develop a contemporary spiritual technology to aid in healing patients today.
Michael Samuels is the founder and director of Art As a Healing Force, a project started in 1990 devoted to healing oneself, others, the community and the earth with creativity and art making. Michael teaches Art and Healing at San Francisco State University, Institute of Holistic Studies. He is a bear dancer with the Chumash People. He has used creativity, art and guided imagery with patients with life threatening illness and life crises for over thirty years in private practice and in consultation. He lectures and does workshops nationwide for physicians, nurses, artists, and patients on how to use creativity and spirituality in healing. He has organized many nationwide conferences on creativity and healing and visited and participated in projects in hospitals where creativity, art and music are used with patients. Michael is currently working on a book on Native American Healing and a book on Animals and Spirituality. He is the author of 21 books including the best selling Well Body Book, Well Baby Book, Well Pregnancy Book and Seeing With the Mind's Eye, one of the first books on guided imagery. Seeing With the Mind's Eye was named as one the 10 most influential health books. More info >>
The Story of Stuff -- Movie Screening and Community Discussion with Annie Leonard, expert in international sustainability and environmental health issues. This event was held at Commonweal on Sunday, March 9th, 2008.
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From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever. More info >>
Annie Leonard is an expert in international sustainability and environmental health issues, with more than 20 years of experience investigating factories and dumps around the world. Coordinator of the Funders Workgroup for Sustainable Production and Consumption, a funder collaborative working for a sustainable and just world, Annie communicates worldwide about the impact of consumerism and materialism on global economies and international health.
Annie's efforts over the past two decades to raise awareness about international sustainability and environmental health issues has included work with Global Anti-Incinerator Alliance, Health Care without Harm, Essential Information and Greenpeace International. She currently serves on the boards of GAIA, the International Forum for Globalization and the Environmental Health Fund. Previously she has served on the boards of the Grassroots Recycling Network, the Environmental Health Fund, Global Greengrants India and Greenpeace India.
What Really Happened in the '60s -- A Conversation with Lloyd Kahn. This event was held at Commonweal on February 22nd, 2008.
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Lloyd Kahn creates visually exquisite and conceptually visionary books about the buildings we live in. His most recent book is Home Work: Handbuilt Shelter. A longtime Bolinas resident, Lloyd was living in San Francisco in the 1960s and has a powerful narrative about what he believes really happened between 1963 and 1967. He has some wonderful visual images that capture that iconic moment in time. Lloyd spoke about the decade and shared some slides from Home Work -- evidence that the power of the 1960s lives on in the buildings visionary home builders are still creating today.
Lloyd Kahn is the editor and publisher of Shelter Publications in Bolinas, California. He was formerly the shelter editor for the Whole Earth Catalog, the editor of the 1973 book Shelter. Shelter Publications has been in business for 37 years and has also published the international bestseller Stretching, by Bob Anderson. Their latest book is The Barefoot Architect: A Manual On Green Building. More info >>
Below is a slideshow from one of our event attendees, Bill Braasch. Many thanks to Bill for the slideshow. You can visit his blog here.
Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry -- Book Reading with Stacy Malkan, Communications Director of Health Care Without Harm. Sponsored by Point Reyes Books and The New School. This event was held at Commonweal on February 16th, 2008.
Stacy Malkan's new book, Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry exposes the toxic truth about the products we smear on our bodies and slather in our hair. The book tells the inside story of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, a national coalition of health and environmental groups working to eliminate toxic chemicals from everyday products. The campaign launched in 2002 with a report that revealed that more than 70% of personal care products-including shampoos, deodorant, fragrance and lotion-contain phthalates, a set of industrial chemicals linked to birth defects and reproductive harm.
Since 2001, Stacy has served as the communications director of Health Care Without Harm, a global network of 440 groups in 52 countries working to reduce the environmental harm of the health care industry. Prior to that, She worked for 10 years as an investigative journalist and newspaper publisher in the Colorado Rockies. In her new book, Stacy describes what she's learned along the way about the science and politics of chemicals, and the inspiring stories of the activists, entrepreneurs, scientists and politicians who are working for a healthier future. More info >>
Green Chemistry, Green Materials, Green Energy: Recipe for a Toxic Free Future with Gary Cohen, Founder and Co-Executive Director of Health Care Without Harm. This event was held at Commonweal on December 14th, 2007.
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Gary Cohen is one of the foremost strategists and activists in the international community of those seeking to move us toward a world free of toxic chemicals. Gary is a Founder and Co-Executive Director of Health Care Without Harm, the international campaign for environmentally responsible healthcare.
Gary is also the Executive Director of the Boston-based Environmental Health Fund, which works on domestic and global chemical safety issues. Gary is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Sambhavna Clinic and Documentation Center in Bhopal, India, which provides free medical care to the survivors of the Union Carbide gas disaster in Bhopal. He has been working on environmental health issues for twenty years and has published numerous articles on environmental health issues in the United States and India. Gary is an advisor to the John Merck Fund on issues of environmental health and a co-founder of Green Harvest Technologies, a bio-based materials start up. He was awarded the Skoll Global Award for Social Entrepreneurship in 2006 and the Frank Hatch Award for Enlightened Public Service Award in 2007. More info >>
The New School at Commonweal Presents: Community Gathering with Carl Anthony -- Thought Leader in Environmental Justice. This event was held at Commonweal on December 13th, 2007.
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Carl Anthony is one of the preeminent thought leaders in environmental justice in the United States. He is the Founder and was for 12 years was the Executive Director of the Urban Habitat Program, one of the oldest environmental justice organizations in the country. Until recently he was a Ford Foundation Program Officer in the Community and Resource Development unit. He is currently a Visiting Scholar/Ford Foundation Senior Fellow in the Department of Geography at the University of California Berkeley.
The mission of Urban Habitat is to promote multicultural urban environmental leadership for sustainable, socially just communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. With a colleague, Luke Cole at the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, he published and edited the Race, Poverty and Environment Journal, the only environmental justice periodical in the country.
From 1991 through 1997, Anthony served as President of Earth Island Institute, an international environmental organization to protect and conserve the global biosphere. Congressman Ron Dellums appointed Carl Anthony Chair and Principal Administrative Officer of the East Bay Conversion and Reinvestment Commission in 1993. The Commission was charged with overseeing a National Pilot Project to guide the closure of 500 military bases in the US, to re-envision the role of the National Laboratories, and to implement the conversion of 5 military bases in Alameda County. He has taught at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture and Planning, the University of California Colleges of Environmental Design and Natural Resources. He has been an Advisor to the Stanford University Law School on issues of environmental justice. Anthony has a professional degree in architecture from Columbia University. In 1996, he was appointed Fellow at the Institute of Politics, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.
Carl is the author of many publications including "Eco-Psychology and the Deconstruction of Whiteness," a groundbreaking chapter in Theodore Roszak's book, Eco-Psychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind.
Paintings by Claudia Niseema Nolte. Reception was held at Commonweal on September 15th, 2007. Exhibit continued through December 18th, 2007.
Claudia Niseema Nolte was born and raised in Europe and has actively pursued painting as an art form since the 1970's when she was a young teenager. She studied in England, Switzerland and Germany and traveled extensively throughout Europe, Asia and Northern America. In 1991 she moved from India to California where she still lives.
Her watercolor "MASKS" has been published on the cover of the award-winning Art & Literary Journal "Milvia Street." In 2000 she started a series of oil paintings featuring spirals, desert views and architecture. Her most recent work in called: Archetypes of the Greek Mythology.
"Art does not reproduce the visible, but makes visible."
—P.Klee
A Spirituality for our Time with Thomas Yeomans, PhD, the Founder and Director of the Concord Institute. This event was held at Commonweal on July 16th 2007.
Thomas Yeomans' education was first in Music, Classics, and Comparative Literature, particularly poetry, and then—a sharp turn, with the advent of Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology in the 60's—in Education and Psychology.
In 1990 he founded the Concord Institute, in Concord, MA, and shifted his focus gradually from Psychosynthesis to formulating and developing Spiritual/Global Psychology. He has pursued this endeavor in the last decade and a half through teaching, training professionals, writing, and consulting to individuals and organizations. During this time he worked in various European countries as well as throughout North America, and in the 90's he helped a group of Russian doctors and psychologists from the Harmony Institute in St. Petersburg found a post-graduate training institute called the International School for Psychotherapy, Counseling, and Group Leadership.
Two essays by Tom Yeomans: "Presence, Power and the Planet" and "Toward Species Maturity: Spiritual Psychology and the Twenty-first Century"
Saving the World? What International Philanthropy Can and Cannot Do, with David Bonbright, Director of Keystone Accountability. This event was held at Commonweal on July 9th, 2007.
David Bonbright has been an international grantmaker with the Ford Foundation in Africa during the end of apartheid and with the Aga Khan Development Network in pre- to post-911 Pakistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan. Originally from Ross, California, David is based in London with his talented South African filmmaker wife, Elaine Proctor. His mission in recent years, through a project he calls Keystone Accountability, has been to create a better way for foundations, non-governmental organizations, philanthropists and other civil society actors to evaluate the actual effectiveness of third sector projects.
This is important as the absence of commonly agreed and effective approaches to assessing and reporting in the social change space is the biggest constraint to increasing the quality and quantity of international philanthropy and foreign aid. But beyond the "inside baseball" of creating third sector accountability, David is a widely traveled and insightful observer of what is happening in the civil society movement around the world. Please see his recent notes on "Hotel Rwanda" below. More about David Bonbright >>
"Hotel Rwanda" download this pdf file
Joy, Social Intelligence & the Ethical Imagination, with Rick Ingrasci, MD, MPH, This event was held at Commonweal on April 19th, 2007.
Rick Ingrasci is a healer and activist who has been involved in consciousness exploration and social transformation since the mid '60s. Ingrasci has a strong background in psychiatry, holistic medicine, and community development. He co-founded Physicians for Social Responsibility, the American Holistic Medical Association, Interface, and Hollyhock, a retreat center in British Columbia. He is the co-author of "Chop Wood, Carry Water: A Guide to Finding Spiritual Fulfillment in Daily Life. More about Rick Ingrasci >>
Some highlights from this talk:
"I really feel that our generation, the sixties generation, had made a breakthrough that was almost like a recidivist, that we went back and rediscovered what indigenous cultures have known for many, many years, which is that carnival and festivity and ritual and ways to experience communitas, which is really spontaneous love in community, is probably a part of how we're going to find our way out of the jam we're in, as a planet let's say."
"Anyone who's spent anytime in Canada knows the Canadians tend to be a kinder, gentler people... The United States is kind of a looking-out-for-number-one, go-get-'em, free market capitalist culture... A lot of people say that Canada is the fifty-first state. Their economy is so tied into ours and their cultural imagination is so connected to our movies and art forms, etc. But in truth, the indigenous cultures in Canada are amazing and very coherent in their consciousness of what life is about. So there's a lot of mutual exchange, in terms of art and imagery and ways to live. The Canadian indigenous peoples were famous for their potlatches for instance: one of the most generous forms of social organization, where the sign of wealth was not how much you kept for yourself, but how much you gave away. And I like that idea. I think we could actually start to apply that a little more generally in the world as we become a global society and have better results than we're seeing with "so-called" global capitalism."
The Spiritual Labor of Earth Healing, with Peter Warshall, Editor-At-Large for the Whole Earth Magazine and the founder of Peter Warshall and Associates. This event was held at Commonweal on February 27th, 2007.
Peter Warshall has worked for thirty years to improve governance and effective citizen participation within local communities, balance conservation and development (especially water resources, ranching and forestry, and biodiversity), as well as teach, guide and write on natural and cultural history and what is now called sustainability. Trained as both biologist and anthropologist, Peter has taken a broad view of the complexity of societal change. While others may work as a scientist or politician, Peter has tried to bridge these realms as scientist/essayist with years of public service. He works on all socio-economic levels and with highly diverse peoples and ecosystems, believing that important beneficial change can come from many unexpected and imaginative human sources. The diverse ecosystems of northern Mexico and southern Arizona and New Mexico presently define his bi-national sense of home. He owns and runs his own small consulting group.